Alcohol and Wine: Wine is equated with spirits, cocktails and aperitifs solely because of the existence of the alcohol they share. This detrimental equation has gone on for far too long. It seems imperative to emphasize the fact that there are three basic categories of alcohol.
Angelo Gaja, Photo: Livets Goda magazine
Alcohol by fermentation
Unchanged for at least 10,000 years, since man by a fortuitous accident made the first wine, this results when yeasts, the agents of fermentation, settle on berries of grapes and set off a process that is the most natural, the most organic by far. The alcohol thus produced is the essential, primordial constituent of wine, which includes some 3 percent of other components, the rest being water.
Alcohol by distillation
This is produced by the enrichment of alcohol by means of industrial distillation. It results from the producer’s need to achieve a higher alcohol content and thus bring the beverage into the category of spirits. During distillation, most of the other elements of wine are lost.
Alcohol as additive
This refers to the intentional addition of distilled alcohol for the production of drinks such as aperitifs and cocktails. Such drinks are totally deprived of the elements of wine, in a regulated percentage in the mixture with water, coloring matter and flavorings. Even though the molecular components may be the same, the nature and function of the alcohol present in wine are profoundly different from those of spirits or fabricated drinks.
Our aim is not to establish hierarchies or to incite competition between different types of products, but only to provide maximum clarity to consumers convinced that the effect of drinking wine is similar, or indeed identical, to that of drinking spirits or fabricated alcoholic beverages. That notion is grossly incorrect and misleading, precisely because the obvious manner and customs of drinking wine are primarily in company and with meals.
With the ongoing demonization of alcohol, confusion becomes highly penalizing for wine. Thus producers, consumers and communicators feel compelled to uphold the image of wine as separate from that of spirits or fabricated drinks.
No other beverage of the western world has the cultural or historical depth of wine, with its roots in the humanities, history, culture, philosophy, geography, landscape, tradition, and religion. Noah, in Genesis, after surviving the flood and descending from the ark, first planted the vine so that wine could be enjoyed in company as sustenance and joy.
Angelo Gaja
Barbaresco, February 2025